If you haven’t already found it, there’s a story in the print (and online) edition this morning on the Claude Lemieux situation from his perspective and the perspective of several of his potential new teammates.

At first it was going to be a story strictly on what the current Sharks — mostly the veterans who played with or against Lemieux — thought about all this. But then just as I was wrapping that up, the phone rang and it was Claude himself. I had put in the request to talk with him a couple days ago through the Worcester PR staff and never heard back, so I had pretty much given up on talking with him for this particular story. No matter. We talked about 15 minutes and then I had to rip up what I had written and pretty much start over again. Made for a very late dinner, but definitely worth it.

Anyway, all that is a long-winded partial explanation as to why I’m only now posting a couple quick notes from yesterday’s practice. Let’s just say Tuesday got away from me in a hurry.

*******The Sharks practiced on a Minneapolis rink that was a 30-minute bus ride going there and an hour-long coming back because falling snow slowed traffic on the interstate to a crawl. Continue Reading →

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Claude Lemieux has indeed cleared waivers so feel free to amp up the speculating. Just be aware that he’s staying in Worcester (for now?).

More on that down the road.

I had an early morning flight from Dallas (yawn) and have just enough time to post and a quick lunch before hitching a ride on the team bus to this afternoon’s practice. The Sharks stay in downtown St. Paul, but, for whatever reason, they’re skating in a rink on the far side of Minneapolis. Since this is one stop where I take cabs from place to place rather than the usual rental car, I wasn’t bashful about asking and the Sharks said it was no problem. Just trying to save the boss a few dollars in these troubled economic times.

That said, there were more than a few unused quotes from last night’s 3-1 victory over the Stars that might be worth a read before they get too stale. Here you go:

*******Evgeni Nabokov on the increasing difficulty of getting wins: “It’s going to get even harder because we start facing desperate teams. They are hungry and they need points. They’re going to play their butts off and we just have to match that every night. We have to realize that. It’s going to be harder and harder from now on.”

On shaking off a flukey, but important Dallas goal: “To be honest with you, you just concentrate on the game at that point. It’s five minutes left. You don’t have much time to think about it. You go and you react on a play. Now, probably, you think about it.” Continue Reading →

Timing is everything and in this case, the schedule-maker was kind. Having the Sharks play the Stars tonight enabled me to talk this morning with the last guy to coach Claude Lemieux in the NHL as well as two of his former teammates from his final NHL season.

(Aside: Maybe I’m focusing too much on Lemieux, but I think it’s a pretty fascinating story. Not saying I think he will or won’t be playing in San Jose this season. Just that the fact he MIGHT be, makes for some interesting possibilities. Plus, the San Jose aspect of the story could be dead by noon tomorrow if he’s claimed on waivers, so now is the time to run with it.)

Much of the material I got from talking with Dallas’s Marty Turco, Stephane Robidas and Coach Dave Tippett shows up in the print edition tomorrow.

But the gist of what they had to say about Lemieux’s final 32 games in the NHL, plus seven post-season games in 2003, is this:

At 38, he could still skate and shoot, but had a hard time cracking the lineup. Players said that’s because there were younger guys around and it was their time. Tippett, however, said the injury bug is what kept Lemieux from not being a bigger contributor. Continue Reading →

Wilson said Sunday night that Lemieux — a right wing once regarded as the league’s top agitator and most hated player — will be given a two-way contract Monday that would enable the Sharks to bring him to San Jose from the franchise’s Worcester development team where he has been playing for the past month.

The G.M. emphasized, however, that the evaluation process is far from complete and continued to play down the likelihood of Lemieux winding up in San Jose. Continue Reading →

DALLAS — I, too, noticed Devin Setoguchi’s absence for extended periods of time last night. I’m not sure how direct the connection is, but the team today announced that his grandmother has died and that the 21-year-old right wing has flown to Alberta to be with his family. He will miss Monday night’s game against the Stars, then rejoin the team Tuesday for its practice in St. Paul.

I don’t think anybody other than Devin is in position to say whether that was a distraction last night, but I wanted to get that out there to (hopefully) stop any speculation.

And I’ll go so far to say that I’m sure all of us extend our condolences to him and his family at this time.

So where does that leave the lines against Dallas? Here’s how they skated today:

DALLAS — I was going to wait until after this morning’s skate before posting. But they bumped it back an hour and I’ve used the time to collect some of the post-game material from that 3-2 overtime loss in St. Louis.

So for now, we’ll look backward. And, ideally, in a couple hours there’ll be some fresh material to report.

*********I don’t think I’ve ever heard a player bring up bad ice conditions after a victory, but more than one mentioned how difficult it was playing on the Scottrade Center surface.

“It was one of those nights when the puck was bouncing all over the place,” Dan Boyle said. “It was kind of ugly. You’ve got to create your ugly goals and your ugly bounces and we obviously didn’t do that.”

But it wasn’t as if Boyle was blaming the ice for the overtime loss.

“They played us tough — they work hard, we know that,” he said. “There’s not a lot of veteran name guys over there, but there’s defnitely no lack of respect for them.”

******Maybe I’m paying too much attention to a couple of line changes — the kind of stuff that goes on all the time when teams aren’t clicking as well as the Sharks have been — but here’s what McLellan had to say after the game about Mike Grier and Jonathan Cheechoo. Continue Reading →

ST. LOUIS — Milan Michalek will be back in the lineup tonight and Coach Todd McLellan is taking advantage of the situation to do a little more line shuffling than usual.

McLellan is keeping Jonathan Cheechoo on the second line, where he’s had two assists in the three games since he came back from his injury. That was the spot Michalek had been occupying for weeks before suffering an upper body injury in Columbus and missing the past three games.

Now, Michalek is coming back on the third line alongside Tomas Plihal and Marcel Goc (When was the last all-European line the Sharks put together? Yeah, I know — Larionov, Makarov and Garpenlov. But since then?)

That means Mike Grier is moving to the fourth line and McLellan said he hopes that move sends a dual message.

“I think Mike Grier can be better, but he’s also going there because we have a ton of faith in him and trust him to solidify that line at this moment.” Continue Reading →

The collective bargaining agreement betweeen the NHL and its players association mandates the two-day Christmas holiday break with no games on the 24th and 25th.

That doesn’t apply to those of us who cover the league, so here I am. Writing, of all things, about the Christmas break.

It hasn’t always been there. As late as 1971, the NHL had Christmas games on its schedule. Bargaining the following summer between the league and the NHL Players Association ended that practice and it’s safe to say that was something the union was happy to have.

But back in the Michael Jordan era, the NBA turned Christmas Day into a showcase event, playing a limited schedule that always managed to feature the Chicago Bulls and drew decent TV ratings. The NHL wouldn’t mind trying something similar, and, according to a league source, floated the idea past the players union not too long ago. No thanks, came the reply.

Players, understandably, like the idea of home for the holidays. Rob Blake, for one, shook off the notion of giving up the two-day break in the schedule.

“Even the two days is great. It used to be more, though because I used to fly home from California (to Simcoe, Ontario) and that would’ve needed three days,” Blake said. Continue Reading →

None of them will in the lineup tonight against Vancouver, but Tuesday morning it was reunion time on the ice: Torrey Mitchell skating with his teammates for the first time since breaking his leg on the second day of training camp, Jeremy Roenick for the first time since undergoing shoulder surgery eight days ago, and Milan Michalek for the first time since suffering an upper body injury six days ago in a game against Columbus.

“It felt really good to go out and sweat with all these guys,” Mitchell said afterward.

Not that everything felt 100 percent on Day One.

“Anything with stopping and starting, I’m still a little bit hesitant,” he said. “But I can do most of the drills.”

Mitchell wanted to be practicing with his teammates by Christmas, but the timing had more to do with when he was ready, according to Coach Todd McLellan.

“We didn’t sit down with him yesterday and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to fit this in.’ He was ready to go so credit to him for working hard,” the coach said. Continue Reading →